Possible cure for insomnia found
Posted on: 27/Feb/2017 9:55:52 AM
Researchers from the Oxford University have found a simple placebo may really work well to cure insomnia. The findings were published in the journal Brain.
A placebo is a substance or treatment with no active therapeutic effect. A placebo may be given to a person in order to deceive the recipient into thinking that it is an active treatment.
The team from Oxford University recruited 30 patients with primary insomnia, who underwent neurofeedback treatment and placebo-feedback treatment over several weeks. The patients spent nine nights and twelve sessions of neurofeedback and twelve sessions of placebo-feedback training. Insomnia patients underwent this procedure before and after real as well as placebo neurofeedback training. In between the first and second, as well as the third and fourth of these visits, insomnia patients completed twelve sessions of neurofeedback treatment and twelve sessions of placebo-feedback treatment. The order of trainings, that is, real or placebo neurofeedback treatment was counterbalanced across the participants and the twelve sessions were completed within four weeks.
Say the researchers Given our results, one has to question how much of published neurofeedback effects are due to simple expectations on the side of the participants or, in other words, unspecific placebo effects. We found that improvement of symptoms was not specific to neurofeedback training, but rather seems to have been brought about by unspecific factors such as affection and care. Especially in patient populations where various complaints are often associated with learning difficulties positive neurofeedback effects beyond the subjective level may be hard to achieve.
